The Rita Farmer Mystery series Box Set

by Elizabeth Sims

  “Well, this is kind of confusing,” I said, “so if you’d—”

  “I understand,” she interrupted. “Goodbye.”

  So that was how it was. Next I tried his lawyer. He took my call, but said he had no idea where Jeff was. Which I’d basically expected—confidentiality and all—but I wanted him to know Jeff had gone AWOL, in case he didn’t.

  “Well,” I suggested, “maybe we’d better file a missing-persons report, then.”

  “I wouldn’t,” said the attorney.

  I hung up.

  Fuck it, then. In seven years I’ll have him declared dead and Petey can get his hands on his 401(k) for college.

  _____

  “How are you feeling?” Mark asked Eileen as court convened the next morning.

  “Fine.” Her eyes were determined.

  “Then we’ll swear you immediately. You’re our last witness.”

  “Mark,” I suggested, “would it be all right if I moved the chart easel to the other side of the witness box? Then when Eileen turns her head to look at it she’ll still be in line with the jury, and they’ll see her face better. In case you use it, I mean, because—”

  “Yes, yes, do it. If you have a good idea, act on it. I shouldn’t have to babysit you.”

  Five minutes later Eileen took the oath.

  Our star witness seated herself gracefully, wearing a caramel-brown dress of light wool, ordinary pantyhose, and gorgeous calfskin shoes, neat and spare, but very quietly elegant with that dress. The dress was new for the day; she’d told me Steve Calhoun’s wife had picked it out for her. It was perfect, giving her a warm, soft, yet substantial look. She wore plain gold ball studs in her ears, no other jewelry except her wedding set. She’d done the semi-French twist with her hair, and it looked pretty good. She’d gotten her roots touched up somehow—a smuggled box of L’Oreal, no doubt—and had on a bare sheen of lipstick.

  She appeared rested, alert, and concerned.

  I’d have hired her as prime-time anchor in a minute. I thought a strand of pearls would have completed the look, but then again it might have been overkill. What did I feel for her now? Only hopefulness and excitement. The thrill of taking the stage, as if I were taking it myself, striding out from the wings full of confidence. Guilty? Innocent? At this moment I did not care.

  Mark set right off on the plan Gary had been considering, which was to merely ask Eileen to tell the jury what had happened that evening, “starting around dinnertime.” No speculating, no leading other than an occasional prompt for direction.

  The instant Eileen began to speak, the little ambient sounds of the courtroom stopped. Her throaty voice sounded clean and calm.

  “We went into the kitchen together,” she began simply. “I fed Gabriella some noodles and peas, and she drank some milk. I ate some chicken, but she didn’t want any. Some roasted chicken.”

  Eileen was a mother, and she related the plain details of the last evening she’d spent with her child. Bath time, story time, bedtime. And yes, she was definitely projecting her voice, her self, to Beatrice Rhinegold there in the jury box. I could almost see Beatrice myself—a pudgy thing in glasses and a pullover sweater.

  “I put her pink sleeper on her,” Eileen went on. “She seemed a little restless, trying to get comfortable, so I sat in the rocker next to her crib for a while. She settled down.” Eileen paused, and Mark asked softly, “What was the last thing you did before leaving her bedroom?”

  “I kissed her.”

  After that came the dreadful time, the time when time itself stands still and the things people convince themselves to do are things that only nighttime can accept.

  Eileen had no narration for that time, and so in her testimony there was just a dark blank as Mark Sharma paused.

  Then he asked, “And what did you do when you woke up in the morning?”

  Still poised, she began. Her voice trembled, but bravely she kept her eyes lifted, and I saw her instinctively and slowly shift her gaze to different faces in the jury box. Any cabaret performer learns that if you fix on one person, everyone surrounding that person will feel spoken to or sung to as well. I hadn’t tried to teach Eileen that, feeling it might have been one too many things to remember. Plus often an amateur, trying that trick, will move her eyes around too much and look unnatural.

  But she was doing it, all on her own, and it came off beautifully.

  I pulled for my protégé, pulled hard for her.

  Eileen’s voice broke, and as she spoke about finding the dead body of her daughter, she wept softly. The judge asked if she wanted a moment.

  “No, thank you,” she said gently, managing to keep just enough composure not to break the spell. “I’d like to finish.”

  The jury had stopped breathing, everybody had stopped breathing.

  “I felt the whole world had come to an end,” said Eileen. “I knew if she was cold and stiff, she was dead, but I tried to pretend when the ambulance came she was still alive. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but I thought if I told them she was alive, she’d be alive.”

  After a pause, Mark asked his final question. “Eileen Tenaway, did you give your baby that Valium?”

  She lifted her head a notch higher.

  Gazing over the top of Mark Sharma’s haircut, her profile to the jury, noble and sad, she said, “No, I did not.”

  She was incandescent.

  Chapter 31 – Down the Rabbit Hole

  Daniel Clements’s own incoming ringtone was “Sixteen Going on Seventeen.” He identified with Liesl von Trapp in that he all too willingly believed the blandishments of the older men who hit on him. Trouble was, he wanted neither a daddy nor a boy toy. Meeting up with Gary Kwan again had been too good to be true. He couldn’t think about that anymore. Except, of course, that’s all he could think about.

  Daniel had never been a vengeful fellow; even when badly wronged he’d preferred to walk away from it. But now he saw that some wrongs were different.

  He wanted to participate in what was left of Gary Kwan: his memory, his justice. Daniel used to believe in letting an expert do it. But now he would find out some things for himself.

  And the point was this: his phone played the song, and he answered it to find Olin, the police consultant from Abilene Cop Shop on the line. Daniel pulled his grocery cart over to the oranges.

  “So I checked those phone numbers, right?” said Olin. “One of them was for Steven Calhoun, and one of them was Lisa Feltenberger. Those are people on Kwan’s defense team for Eileen Tenaway, right?”

  “Right. What about the third number?”

  “That’s the unusual one. It belongs to a Sally Jacubiak,” and he spelled it. “Do you know her?”

  “No.”

  “Well, they’re looking into her.”

  “Yeah, OK. I don’t know if it means anything. It could even have been a wrong number.”

  “The guys on the case know the duration of the call, so I’d say it wasn’t.”

  “OK. Uh, do you have an address for this Sally Jacubiak?”

  “What for?”

  “Olin, do you still want to go out with me?”

  “You know I do.”

  “Then give me the address.”

  _____

  An hour later Daniel, carrying a mixed bouquet from the Safeway, followed an elderly man into an apartment building on Crenshaw Avenue. He took the stairs to the third floor and knocked on the door of 3E. No one answered it.

  Next door, 3G, flew open.

  “I have a delivery for Sally Jacubiak,” he said politely, holding the flowers over his lower face in case she had been a fan of Abilene Cop Shop.

  The woman, hair once again in the tinfoil pincurls, told him about Sally’s trip to Joshua Tree. She looked as if she’d like to eat up Daniel with a spoon. He gave her the flowers and turned away. As she thanked him, he heard someone throwing security bolts inside the door to Sally Jacubiak’s apartment.

  _____

  I came home tha
t night late and tired, having reviewed with the defense team all of our files and notes, making sure we’d done as much for Eileen as we could. We’d met at Steve Calhoun’s private office in Burbank, none of us eager to open the door again at Kwan & Associates. We helped Mark Sharma craft his closing statement.

  It was almost midnight when I walked into my apartment.

  Daniel was asleep on the sofa.

  Just as I was about to peek in on Petey, the phone rang. I answered, expecting it to be Jeff.

  “Hey, it’s Janet,” said Janet brightly. “‘Member?”

  “Yes,” I said, sweat springing out on my palms.

  “Just wanted to warn you about something. They’re after you again.”

  “Who’s after me?”

  “You know.”

  “No, I don’t, damn you. Who?”

  Daniel stirred.

  Janet suggested, “Better check on your boy.”

  I rushed into Petey’s room, holding the cordless to my ear.

  His bed was empty. The curtain fluttered at the open window. Cool, peaceful night air filled the room.

  “Oh, my God.”

  Down the rabbit hole.

  “Daniel!” I called. Into the phone I said, “He’s gone. I have to call the police. Tell me—”

  “Calm down,” said Janet.

  Daniel stood in the room in his socks, his face bloodless, eyes huge. He crossed to the window and thrust his upper body out, then back in. “Shit, shit,” he said. A large vein popped out on his forehead as his color came back. “Who is that?” he demanded.

  “Shut up!” I said.

  “Hey, girl,” said Janet, “don’t worry. Petey’s safe!”

  “What!”

  “He’s with me! Surprise!” Carefree intensity.

  I couldn’t speak.

  Janet said, “Yeah, yeah, everything’s OK! Had you going, there. He’s fine. For now.”

  I willed myself to remain sane. I couldn’t feel my body at all. Every cell was focused on the voice on the other end of that phone line.

  Off to the side, she said, “Hey, Commander Peterson,” and I knew she really had him. “Wanna say hi to Mommy? No?”

  “Petey!” I shouted.

  Daniel gripped my arm and put his ear close to the phone.

  “I guess he doesn’t want to talk to you,” said Janet with a sympathetic inflection. “That’s kids for you. He’s busy watching fifty thousand shows on cable. You don’t have cable, do you?” Her voice went too fast. “Look, hon, whatever you do, don’t call the police. ’Kay? If you do, he’ll—well, it’ll be a real long time before you see him again. And when you do, he won’t be like you remembered. ’Kay? At all.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “I promise I’ll do it. You’re being watched, so don’t even consider the police. Don’t even brain-wave the word. And keep your lunky dumb boyfriend out of this too.”

  “Right.”

  “Because what this is, Rita, is a fantastic opportunity for you.”

  I stood looking at nothing. “What do you want?”

  “All right. Remember that storage-locker key we talked about? ’Member that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Get it.”

  “But—”

  “Find out from Eileen where it is. She knows, believe me. Go get it. Then wait for me to call tomorrow after court. Give me your cell number too, I don’t have it.”

  “How did you get my home number?”

  “Memorized it while I was talking to Mr. Pepsodent. It’s on your phone. Cell number now.”

  I gave it to her.

  “Thanks,” she said. “You’ll have your little guy back in a jiffy. All right, then?”

  Desperately, I said, “He likes pizza.”

  “Oh, I know that already. We’re great friends. We got some Frosted Flakes in here too, which I myself like. Potato chips, new DVDs—I’ve even got Fingershredder, kids are supposed to like that movie—oh, we’re having a ball. I just hope he doesn’t start crying too much. I’ve been a little weepy myself off and on. Well, he’s pretty happy for now.”

  My throat tightened so hard my breaths grew ragged.

  Janet said, “Rita, Rita, don’t make this such a big deal! Very little for you to remember: Key. No police.”

  I’ll never know the number of years off my life that night took. When the phone went silent I spun on Daniel. “How could you have let somebody take him! What the hell happened?” Tautly, he told me he’d let Petey play his ScoreLad in his room, loud, after dinner. Daniel had managed to fall asleep on the sofa, lulled by the relentless beeping and crashing noises, which, as I well knew, blended into a horrid white noise after a while.

  We inspected the window. Whoever had come for Petey had climbed up the fire escape and convinced him to open the window latch. Or—

  “Have you been smoking?” I grabbed Daniel’s shirt and smelled it. “Did you—did you—”

  Sinking under my grip, he said, “Yes. I sneaked out there to smoke while Petey was in the tub. I must have left the latch open.” The outside safety light had no bulb in it.

  “Rita, I’m—”

  “Don’t even talk! Don’t say anything!”

  I could barely gasp enough air into my lungs.

  “Call 911,” said Daniel.

  “No!”

  “Are you crazy? We need the police!” He got his cell phone out. Then my wind came back. I attacked him like a leopard. We struggled there in Petey’s bedroom, then when it became clear I would hurt myself in order to stop him, he gave up.

  “He’s my son,” I panted, “and I’m not crazy. I’m not too distraught to think clearly. The woman is serious.”

  “All the more reason to—”

  “Shut up, Daniel! I know what she wants, and I’m going to get it for her. I know I’m supposed to call the police. They tell you to do that. But I know she’ll do what she said. I feel it and I know it.”

  “But—”

  “God damn it! The Lindberghs went to the police and look what it got them. The Gettys went to the police and they got their kid’s ear in the mail. The Hearsts went to the police and it only encouraged the kidnappers to ask for more and more.”

  He looked at me. “How do you know all that?”

  “When you’re a mother you make it your business to learn this shit.”

  “All right, Rita. I’m going now. There’s no apologizing for what happened tonight, so I’m not going to try. I know Petey will come back to you.”

  “If you tell your cop advisor pal about this, I will kill you, Daniel.”

  He looked at me as if he believed me.

  And I meant it.

  He left without another word.

  In cold anger, I paced the apartment. I went to Petey’s room to look for his Benjamin Bunny that he slept with, but it too was gone. Oddly, that gave me some solace, because it meant Janet knew something about children.

  The phone rang at two o’clock, and I grabbed it, my heart in my mouth. It was Daniel, sounding determined.

  “Rita, I’m working on it.”

  “Well, don’t, oh Daniel, for the love of God. Don’t fuck this up.”

  “I just want you to know I haven’t abandoned you.”

  “Goddamn it, abandon me! Please! And abandon Petey! You played a desk sergeant on a police show and now you think you’re supercop. I’m handling this. Stay out of it!” I hung up on him.

  I paced and was angry. Then I paced and thought. I thought harder than I ever had in my life. Then I began to plan.

  _____

  At seven a.m. I was in Eileen’s holding cell, ahead of Mark. Sitting at the little table, Eileen met my cold fury with a determinedly neutral attitude, as if she’d been expecting something like this and wasn’t going to give any more than she had to—or wanted to.

  I remained standing and said simply, “My son Petey has been abducted. I haven’t called the police. She wants the key to the storage locker. Where is it?”

>   Eileen looked up at me. She had on a wine-colored dress, which she’d worn earlier in the trial. It brought out her hazel eyes, sharpened them. She sat on that one for a moment. I watched her think, I watched her weigh pros and cons. Then she said, “She would do something like that.”

  I leaned in. “Who? Who is she?”

  She shook her head.

  “Eileen, she’s got some hold on you. What is it?”

  “I know what she wants. She can have it. Yep, she can have everything that’s in that locker.”

  “So there is a locker. Why did you pretend not to know what I was talking about before?”

  “Rita, it was none of your business.”

  “Well, now it is.”

  “Yes. Yes.” She tapped the table. “Rita, try to bear with me here.” I almost slugged her. “Bear with you!” I hissed so the deputy wouldn’t hear, “My son has been kidnapped! Bear with—”

  She sighed. “I’m trying to—I’ve made mistakes on several levels. I’ve had to bury my rage about Gabriella, or I would have died too, I’m sure of it. I guess you can really understand that now.” She gazed at her hands on the tabletop. She looked up. “I don’t think we can stop them.”

  “Them who?”

  “But if I really do get out of here—then maybe. Maybe. I don’t know about your little boy. Maybe he’ll be all right. But the point is, you and your son are not the last people they’re going to try to screw with. There’s no end to what they want. I’d like to stop them from hurting anyone else.”

  “All right. Mark’s going to be here any minute. What’s in the locker, Eileen?”

  “I guess you’re going to find out.”

  “Where’s the key?”

  “At the house.”

  “Where at the house?”

  “You’ll have to get Mark or the police involved, because Gary had my keys. I don’t know where they are now.”

  “Fuck that.” I’d buy a chain saw and cut my way in, if I had to. Eileen, seeing “chain saw” in my face, continued quickly, “It’s in the garage. There’s a car under a blue cloth cover. Go in the backseat behind the driver’s seat. There’s a string lying on the seat. Pull it. The key’s on the other end. Did she ask you to find out where the locker is?”